Jan Haag
A book release reading for Companion Spirit
Jan Haag is a creative writing and journalism professor at Sacramento City College. She has worked as a reporter and copy editor for newspapers and United Press International, as well as serving as editor-in-chief of Sacramento magazine. She holds a master’s degree in English and Journalism from California State University, Sacramento. A poet and novelist, Jan is the author of Companion Spirit, a poetry collection just released by Amherst Writers & Artists Press. She has completed a young adult novel set in British Columbia and is working on a novel set in Sacramento in the 1950s and 1970s. She is an Amherst Writers and Artists affiliate who leads writing workshops in Sacramento.
companion spirit
walking in the
front door i
have to catch myself
at the threshold-
the first breath inside,
i inhale you
another step, woozy
with the scent of dog
and wood shavings,
i breathe again
you
here
i call your name,
hoping,
but there is
no answer
no dog
no wood
except the oak
tables you
crafted by hand,
the shavings long
swept away
i pause in
our living room
barely breathing
heart thudding
though there is
no vision
no voice
you’ve made an
appearance
inhaling you
again, i use
your line when
you’d first hear my
voice on the phone:
Gone
Two months after, she realized
she could not envision his eyes—
smoky brown, heavily lashed—
searching for her.
After the first year, she lost
his voice, no longer felt its timbre
resonating in her head,
and by the second, the texture of
that early gray hair she cut
in the backyard—gone.
Four years in, she forgot
how it felt to hold him exactly,
and worse, how he held her,
how she’d press her head
against his chest to hear
that clicking valve,
plastic encased in a heart.
She remembered the silence after
it stopped, and him
coldcoldcold in his chair,
one foot fallen off the ottoman.
She touched that porcelain foot,
wore it heavily in her lap as she sat
on the hard wood floor,
felt death thud inside her.
She should have recorded his voice,
memorized his hug, tucked
away snips of hair after cuts—
something, anything
to make him stay.
Now and again, in dreams, he
appears, calls her by name,
his deep voice resonating
though the pillow and
the thick of sleep.
She tries to drag it
with her into daylight,
but she wakes to only memory,
too distant to touch.
“there you are”
